more privacy infringement

UPDATE: via The Regular this provision is being stripped from the bill before it is passed. Sigh of relief for the time being.

Repugs tried to get an amendment into the omnibus spending bill which would have let the Chairs of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees to access the IRS records of anyone they wanted for any reason. The Regular has a rundown.

That's pretty scary. Sounds to me like a return of the HUAC era atmosphere of fear and intimidation. Really, I think that the Repugs agenda vis a vis homeland security and the war on terror can only lead to such an atmosphere. The us vs. them dynamic tends toward an every narrowing concept of "us" and an ever lengthening list of acceptable measures for use against "them". You can see this in the USA PATRIOT Act and in the torture at Abu Ghraib, and in the attutudes the DOJ holds towards both.

DHinMI over on Daily Kos has an interesting take on what happened during the debate and how that applies more generally to the different ways Rebublican and Democratics legislators think. It ties into the divide in ideology which George Lakoff discusses in Don't Think of an Elephant.